By Leonardo Micua

 

FROM now on, the people of Dagupan should stop hoping that the Mother and Child Hospital will still rise.

Yes, this project will not see the light of day anymore because the P150 million allotted to it under the General Appropriations Act of 2022 is no longer available.

Blame no one but the seven majority councilors in the Dagupan Sanggunian for this fiasco. They, who did everything in the book to throw a monkey wrench into this meaningful project that could benefit thousands of mothers and their children coming from poor families.

Only a simple resolution authorizing Mayor Belen Fernandez to sign a memorandum of agreement for this project with the Department of Health was needed to facilitate the release of the money to the Dagupan City government.

But it took almost three years for the seven majority councilors to contemplate whether they want to pass the needed resolution.

Many times, representatives of the DOH, including Director Paula Paz Sydiongco, came to Dagupan to plead to these legislators to pass the resolution for their city to take advantage of the P150 million bonanza made available under the Universal Health Care Act.

They only moved with haste when no less than Health Undersecretary Ma. Rosario Vergiere came to Dagupan to set a final coordination meeting among the warring forces of the Sanggunian and DOH representatives in a bid to save the P150 funding from being reverted back to the national coffers.

It was after this meeting held sometime in October last year, or three months before the P150 million fund would be prescribed, that the resolution authorizing Mayor Belen to sign the MOA with DOH was finally passed, but with a catch that it would be built on a lot vacated by the Land Transportation Office, owned by the Dagupan city government, located in Poblacion Oeste.

The  original proposal that the MCH be located on a lot donated by the Fernandez family to the DOH on Jose de Venecia Sr. Expressway Extension did not sit well with the seven barkadas in the Sanggunian, who posited the distorted view that if the hospital will rise there, the owner of the property around the area, no other than the Fernandezes, will benefit due to the anticipated rise of property valuation.

But as they were fiercely discussing the issue with the minority in the Sanggunian led by Councilor Michael Fernandez, time was running out on the P150 million fund under the custody of the DOH.

Now, it is finally gone.

However, Belen personally appealed to former Congresswoman Manay Gina de Venecia that if she returns to her old post and the Team UnliSerbisyo also prevails over the Team UnliPerwisyo, they will work together so that new funding for MCH will be appropriated by Congress.

Manay Gina, a long friend and ally of Belen, was spotted responding with two thumbs up.

What happened placed Dagupan in the book as the only LGU in the entire country that turned down a P150 million bonanza from the national government.

The people of Dagupan should think and re-rethink if this kind of public servants, who placed premium more to personal aggrandizement rather than the welfare of the people who put them in power, deserve another term of office.

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Mayor Belen Fernandez intentionally mentioned at the beginning of her State of the City Address on March 18 at CSI Stadia the biblical passage cited by Regional Trial Court Judge Michael Paul Israel when he dismissed a petition of the seven majority councilors questioning the validity of the approved 2023 annual budget of Dagupan. 

It says and I quote: “Do not withhold the good from those who deserve it when it is within your power to act” (Proverbs 3:27).

This was clearly an indictment against the seven majority councilors who withheld the approval of the 2023 annual budget that put the city government, its workers and the public of Dagupan in dire financial situation because a reenacted budget was insufficient.

But God is supreme and showered His blessings upon Belen. The seven obviously forgot another biblical passage: “Blessed are the persecuted for thy shall see God”. 

This is now all water under the bridge.

An old streamer clipped on a pedestrian bridge in Tapuac giving the message “we shall not forget” (with seven thumbs down) still reminds us of the undoing of the seven majority councilors. 

Time for payback, I suppose. 

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